Saveur January - February 2016

But really. Let’s be done with that goofy word, that epithet for tone-deaf epicures. It’s always been an infantilizing label. Worse: It’s self-infantilizing. (Know any avid photographers who eagerly introduce themselves as “shutterbugs”? I’m guessing not.) The real problem with the word is the way it’s designed to divide: the folks who claim the title as a way of standing above the food-as-fuel fray from those who deploy the term as derogatory shorthand for what they view as a probably vapid, definitely elitist fixation with what we put in our mouths. So let’s let the bracing winds of a new season usher in a new era of saying… something else. Maybe we don’t need a catchall word for people who appreciate a great meal and what goes into it. Maybe…

No chef wants to open a restaurant in winter. Instead, you want to burst on the scene, edible flowers at the ready, when the markets are overflowing with gorgeous produce. Unfortunately, I haven’t been so lucky: The last three restaurants I opened were all supposed to debut in summer, but each was delayed until long after the fields had turned brown. And now, as I prepare to open a fourth restaurant in San Francisco, Nightbird, it’s the same story all over again—another winter opening. I used to want to bang my head on the wall, but as a chef you learn to adjust. Winter dishes needn’t be limited to comforting stews and hearty braises; we can make things that are light on their toes and don’t leave you feeling weighed…

It’s been an exalted ingredient of Iranian cuisine since ancient times. It lends its distinctive hue and pungent flavor to Spanish paella, Afghani pulao, and the fragrant couscouses of Morocco. In Sweden, they put a pinch of it in sweet yeast buns called Saff ransbröd. And here in the horse-and-buggy counties of southeastern Pennsylvania, the dried red stigma of the autumn-flowering Crocus sativus finds its way into just about everything Justin Hulshizer puts on the dinner table. “Until I was twenty-one, I didn’t know that all chicken potpies and bread stuffing weren’t colored yellow,” Hulshizer says, serving me a plate of yellow scalloped potatoes baked with saff ron. Hulshizer and his neighbors are descendants of Pennsylvania Dutch (from deutsch, or German-speaking) Mennonites who settled the area some 300 years ago, and a…

Did I mention I love beans? Love. I fell hard for them years ago. It was a humble pot of pinto beans that did it, and there was no turning back. Th ose fabled pintos were my induction into the glory of Phaseolus vulgaris—the common bean. Simmered slowly and gently with an onion and a chunk of bacon, the beans took on a velvety, creamy consistency. Th ey were served on a plate with a ladleful of rich bean broth and a square of just-baked cornbread. Th is was nothing like cafeteria three-bean salad, or the sweet baked beans from a can I’d been served as a kid. Th is was deep, nurturing, primal. From there it was an easy step to black beans with onions and cilantro or smashed cannellini…

Recently, I found myself in lower Manhattan eating finger food and clinking glasses with Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College at Yale University. We should have been talking about the reason for the swanky gathering: a fund-raiser for René Redzepi’s Danish nonprofit culinary think tank, MAD, and its new partnership with Yale to launch a leadership institute for ambitious chefs intent on improving food systems around the globe. Redzepi himself was visible in the open kitchen, preparing dinner along with Roy Choi, Daniel Patterson, and Dan Barber. And I also meant to ask Holloway, a brilliant scholar of African-American history, about his own work. Instead, thinking of New Haven, Connecticut, my thoughts turned, naturally, to pizza. “What’s your favorite?” I asked. Holloway responded with something shocking, the kind of secret-sounding inside…

The bar counter was charred in places where cigarettes had been stubbed out. A painting of a horse hung on one wall in a spot where over time just enough sunlight must have fallen to bleach the head out: a headless horse in a nameless bar. A hook, which looked as though it once served as someone’s prosthetic hand, dangled from a chain of Christmas lights. And high above the bar sat several model ships in glass cases. Th ere were no pinball chimes, no televisions turned to hockey, no machines at all (other than the projector and the stereo tucked somewhere behind the counter on which Julie London was now singing). Th e letters avenue p pointed the way to the bathroom, but there was no signage that would…